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Ancestor, Stranger, Here = Then
- The University of Alabama Press
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69 ANCESTOR, STRANGER, HERE = THEN In a house’s history, if you think about all the layers of individuals who have lived there, it is not hard to imagine a few people absorbed unhappiness, due to some dark streak, and chose to never leave. Those who remain, are their timelines stagnant, a day replayed, a glitch in a record? Or do they ride linear time along with the living? k And what would I, Celia, have to say to her, Ann, really? Me, a child of gasoline’s rule, of fruit in winter, women lovers, no livestock? My family lives in disparate states and does not speak of the past. I am only connected to that time by my name. Yet—yet, a millisecond, a flicker of something out of the corner of her body, a passing through the chest, an invisible twine moving her hand— And behind those eyes, who is she but DNA that stretches back to the Mayflower, back over the Atlantic? Who has her reins? Are we just progeny that carries out our forbears’ wills? Ancestor as parasite, or are all possible and past worlds expressed in the present, through this body called Me? Suddenly, I do not know who I am at all. k 70 You can’t say I didn’t try to fit in. But I never feel at home among humans What mammal are you? What animal? Out walking with others, something’s amiss, their mannerisms foreign, mouths moving incomprehensibly— I feel apart. As if I am not Not the same species Deeper and older than culture, innate, gene and eons of predisposition The sky’s flat, and it ends and drops away k Celia finds her mind going into a state of numbness, how easily she falls there, a habit now––not a window, not a leaf or bird to distract her—a continual flatness that hums with agitated boredom . She is afraid to acknowledge her stupor, to make it concrete and ever-present, for she will have to account for wasted hours, days, weeks, months and years, staring, at a ragged loss of how she got here and why she cannot fight the complacent and deadened inertia of being. k I am a foreigner who once knew the language, but time has faded that knowledge. Or maybe I never knew it but only nodded, pretending comprehension. I will have to learn to cover up my grand unmoorings. Do all our gestures and speech barely communicate what we are trying to say? How can we look at each other in the face day after day knowing this? k If each person indeed has a protector—a shaft of light, a presence—overlapping threads or rays crisscrossing, trailing [3.89.163.120] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:49 GMT) 71 behind—how do we account for the largest puppet show, the omniscient and simultaneous care of billions? k Dinner is cooling. It’s been dark for hours. The cat is facing the door. I grow more leadened as I wait. Winter infuses my cells. What if, by sitting still, a great maw of sadness opens? Will I step away in fear or look right into it? k We aim to align our hearts. And yet— ...